If you don't work in film and TV you never really see what goes on behind the scenes. In the industry we call it "BTS" and often production companies will hire someone specifically to create BTS content so they have a record of their productions. Yesterday I was filming some underwater scenes for a new film from one of Hollywood's leading studios. I cant say the name of the film or who it is about as I have to sign NDAs prior to filming. But I think I can show you some photos here and run through how the day went.
We had a week of prep work before the day. We had to organise some props that we would film underwater and also find that blue robe for our main talent. We needed to get some old audio reels from the 60s and find an old style surf board and get it painted to the correct colours as briefed by the director leading the project. The director was in LA in California so I was in charge of getting everything sourced and created.
We then filmed the board from below the surface so thats why it was important we had the colours just perfect. It was tricky because the director wanted to have a silhouette effect yet still see the colours of the board. So I experimented with the light coming from different angles and continued changing the camera settings until we found the best compromise.
One complicated part of the shoot was we had to keep transferring from the boat to the beach where the DIT was waiting to upload the footage for the director in LA to review. The DIT has a very important job. It stands for Digital Imaging Technician. His job is to label all the clips and organize them in to correct folders as per the shot list. In this case he also had to do a quick colour grade and also conform the frame rate ready for director to review on a Zoom call with me.
We were back n forth from the boat to the beach 4 times and that was very stressful as it was quite big waves on the beach and our boat driver was not super happy about it. The next part of the shoot was filming a young boy. For this we had found him using a casting agency in Phuket. He was 14 but looked younger which was perfect for us as the brief was for a 12 year old. I had to film him jumping in to the sea and also swimming.
There are extra safety concerns to consider when you have a minor on set. In this case we needed to make sure he was safe in the water at all times so I hired a lifeguard to be in the water every time he jumped in. What we were not prepared for though was the sudden appearance of huge jellyfish!
I quickly finished the shots we needed with him and then it was time to wrap those shots and head to the beach for some surfing scenes. Our talent was a pretty good surfer so I positioned my self in waist deep water directly in the path of the waves and told him to just surf straight at me.
All in all we finished the day on time with out any mishaps. We got all the shots we needed and the director in LA was super happy. We need to have one more shooting day to get the rest of the surfing shots and possibly re-shoot any of yesterdays material that the director wants picking up. That was my day yesterday!